iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

On 09/01, a new supernova was found in the galaxy NGC 7331, so last night I tried to image it and record a spectrum. It's about mag 12 right now. The spectrum shows the silicon absorption of a type 1a supernova. From this I got an expansion velocity of about -9200 km/s (3% the speed of light). 🔭🧪☄️

An image of a spiral galaxy seen at an oblique angle, with many foreground stars. To the left, several smaller yellowish-gold galaxies form a small arc. Near the core of this galaxy is a bright blue-white star, which is actually a supernova explosion.

The same image as before, but now the location of the supernova is clearly marked by a red crosshairs.

A plot of the supernova's spectrum, from 3400-7400 Angstroms. There are several prominent dips due to the absorption from various elements. The right-most dip is labeled as "Si II" at 6159.75 Angstroms, representing the characteristic silicon absorption feature of type 1a supernovae.

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Jonathan McDowell @planet4589.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Here is our (very simple) paper: Elvis M. and McDowell J.C. (2026) No cities on the Moon: a billion tons of water is not enough for sustainability; Frontiers in Space Technologies 7, 2026.1894104 www.frontiersin.org/journals/spa...

frontiersin.org

Frontiers | No cities on the Moon: a billion tons of water is not enough for sustainability

We show that, with reasonable consumption rate estimates, that (1) power is not a strong constraint on the lunar population but (2) the roughly 1 billion ton...

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Ken Burnside @kenburnside.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

RT if you’ve never had a tab of ChatGPT open, ever. Nor Grok, Claude, or anything else. And I turn it off the moment it tries to pop into other apps. I use @kagi.com to avoid AI summaries of my web searches.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Dolly Parton was a paragon of humanity, supporting childhood literacy and even helping save lives by donating $1 million of her own money to COVID vaccine research during the pandemic. While her loss is saddening, she made the world better for having lived in it. May we all aspire to such a legacy.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

My latest exoplanet transit observation from a few nights ago, so far my first and only clear night this entire month. This is TOI-2046 b, a hot Jupiter orbiting an F-type star 289 lightyears away in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It has a radius of 1.44 Jupiters and orbits in just 1.5 days. 🔭🧪☄️

A lightcurve graph of the star TOI-2046 showing the characteristic dip as its hot Jupiter exoplanet passes in front of it and gradually dims its light. The y-axis is relative flux. The x-axis is time, measured in the barycentric julian date (BJD). The graph is drawn in red, and a best-fit curve is drawn between the points, tracing a flat-bottomed U-shaped dip. There are two red vertical dashed lines that roughly mark the start and end of the U-shaped dip. The first is labeled "predicted ingress" and the second is labeled "predicted egress". Below that, there is another plot of black points with error bars, with a dashed horizontal line running through them. This is the plot of residuals.

$A black-and-white photo of a starfield. There is a bright saturated star with prominent diffraction spikes near the top center part of the image. An arc of bright stars forms a stretched out "C" asterism in the center of the image. One of the stars near the middle of this asterism is pointed out with a red arrow. This is the target star TOI-2046, which hosts a large transiting gas giant planet in a short-period orbit. In the top left corner of the image there is a pair of axes, one green and one yellow. The green axes are pointing straight down and straight right, and are labeled Y and X respectively. The yellow axes are labeled E and N. The E axis is pointing to the left and slightly down, and the N axis is pointing up and slightly left. Running along the top and left sides of the photo are yellow scale bars labeled 2.14'.$

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I hate that between the clouds and now recently these last few years, the wildfire smoke, doing any astronomy during the summer where I live is basically impossible.

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Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

“Not to know what’s beyond is like spending your life in the cellar, being completely oblivious of all the wonderful things around us.” Astronomer Helen Sawyer Hogg was born #OTD in 1905. She was an authority on variable stars and globular clusters, and a sci-com pioneer. 🧪 👩‍🔬 🔭 Image: U. Toronto

A color photo of astronomer standing in front of a University of Toronto observatory. She is wearing a mauve jacket with a gold necklace and a gold broach on her right lapel. Her white hair is pulled back behind a headband, and her head is turned so she is looking upwards and to her right. She is wearing tortoise shell glasses.

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Peter Coles 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍⚧️ 🇮🇪 @telescoper.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

The argument that curiosity-driven research should be supported because it reflects an essential part of human nature does not work if you try it on people who lost their essential humanity a long time ago.

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Doc Vivi Leandra【 VTC 】- Real-Life Scientist VTuber 🧬🖥️ @docvivileandra.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Carbon nanotubes get invoked a lot in sci fi and I need y'all to understand they are basically Super Asbestos They will give you fucking mesothelioma

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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Conservative ideology is rare at universities because it is an intellectual failure. It provides no useful insights and produces no technological advances. It failed. In the biggest free market for ideas ever created, the market chose the productive route of real scholarship and real research.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

So tiny, but yet not an obvious rubble pile. Very strange! A shard from a larger parent body, cast off from a massive impact perhaps?

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Andrew Jones @andrewjonesspace.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Tianwen-2 had arrived. Here's asteroid Kamo'oalewa seen from 20 km away www.xinhuanet.com/20260706/eb8...

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Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

An #OTD thread from last year about Henrietta Swan Leavitt, and an important tool for measuring cosmic distances. 🧪 🔭 👩‍🔬

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

The sky is our common heritage. Billionaires have no right to unilaterally take it from us, as they have so much else. It is past time for mega-constellations to be banned and regulated like the pollution they are.

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Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg @theradr.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Fuck every single Democrat that has ever been willing to compromise on trans dignity, rights and humanity. I hope you assholes are pleased with yourselves. I don’t know if you could’ve prevented this moment, but you should’ve been fighting every step of the way.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

I'm normally anti-prison but saying this sentence should automatically land you in jail.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Didn't get into the post-bacc I applied to. Guess that's another year in industry. Although given that the entire foundation for scientific research is being actively destroyed by Russel Vought, I might have to accept I'll never get into professional astronomy.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

My copy of @alexries.com amazing art book "Other Worlds" finally arrived!

A large hardcover art book. On the cover is a painting of a towering black winged humanoid crouching on the horizon. In the foreground, two small quadrupedal creatures are standing on the shore, staring at the immense figure.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

Gas giant, ice giant, terrestrial, chthonian, carbonaceous, and super-puff.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Fundamentally, the reason we do science is the same reason we make art. Both are creative expressions of our humanity and both are tools for us to explore and understand reality. To treat either as a commodity is to diminish ourselves.

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Justin Walsh @jstpwalsh.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I am not smart enough to give advice to @chanda.blacksky.app and I can't wait to read this book. But I would argue that there's an even greater possibility here: we need humanistic perspectives incorporated into techno-scientific practice to improve their outcomes so everyone benefits.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Barnard 175, a dense cloud of interstellar dust. It's 1400 light-years away in the constellation of Cepehus and is part of the much larger molecular cloud complex known as the Cepheus Flare. The illuminated region is the reflection nebula VdB 152. About 7 hours total integration over two nights. 🔭

$A dense starfield, with several predominantly bright blue stars. There is an especially bright blue star with 4 large diffraction spikes in the lower right side of the image. In the center is a dimmer blue star. Behind the star is a dense cloud of dark dust that extends all the way up to the top of the image, somewhat like a vast plume of smoke. The cloud obscures the stars behind it and visibly reddens them. The blue star in the center is illuminating a patch of the cloud near its tip, creating a small blue reflection nebula.$

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

This is the kind of shit you'd do when trying to speedrun a game of Plague Inc.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

The more I look at this, the more painful it gets.

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Asheesh Kapur Siddique @asheeshks.org · 07/05/2026

Conversations about the future of higher education in the US need to start from the unfortunate, basic fact that both Democrats and Republicans agree with Reagan that government should not subsidize curiosity driven learning and inquiry.

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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Last reskeet: Yeeeeah, srsly. The human superpower is cooperation, not murder. Huge numbers of species commit murder at scale, to the best of their ability. Only one teaches their children how to read, builds steamships and puts rovers on Mars.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

Imagine how many grad students could be funded with the kinds of donations made to university athletics programs

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Sarah Hörst @planetdr.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I was just contacted by a reporter asking for comment about the whole Pluto planet thing. Hanging on by a thread over here.

Honestly, I understand why you all are doing this because it is flashy- but we are struggling with existential issues in planetary science in the US right now and I'm really not interested in talking about this. If you want to write about any of that I would be happy to talk.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Issacman has a net worth of about $1.5 billion. I think all of that should be liquidated and seized, to be used to help partially fund these missions.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 23/04/2026

When Einstein developed general relativity the closest thing to a practical application that could even be imagined at the time was a slightly more precise description of where to look for the planet Mercury in the sky, and yet now we’d all be literally lost without it. Anyway: fund basic research.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

I think I've managed to boil down the core tenets of my setting, now I just need to actually write some stories.

The Cosmic Commons - Space is the common heritage of all humankind and must be explored ethically and sustainably.
The Infinite Mosaic - Diversity of thought, expression, ability, and form.
The Technicritical Lens - Technology alone cannot solve society's problems, nor is progress inevitable or linear.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

How's that vibe coding coming along, bluesky devs

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

More images from a few days ago: the globular cluster M5 and the Sombrero Galaxy (M104). 🔭🧪

A dense ball of stars that fills most of the screen. The stars increase in number towards the center until they blur together into a fuzzy haze of light. Most of the stars are white, but there are also occasional blue and yellow stars peppered throughout the cluster.

A small edge-on galaxy sitting in a field of stars. The galaxy has a golden hue with a bright central nucleus and a thick, dark line running along its outer edge.

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Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · 13/04/2026

Artemis II has been a much needed celebration of science, competency, and humanity. But reminder: the White House is proposing cutting NASA’s budget by billions. If you’ve loved watching our astronauts, don’t forget to call your representatives and urge them to keep funding science.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft captures the Moon and the Earth in one frame during the Artemis II crew’s deep space journey

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Finally had almost a week of clear skies after such a dreary March. 🔭

A copse of trees silhouetted against a starry sky. Through the murky skyglow on the horizon, the extremely faint band of the Milky Way can just barely be seen.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Not at all. I had planned on being a professional astronomer working at a university and teaching classes while doing interesting research about exoplanets. None of that has happened and it's looking more out of reach by the day.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

First test of my photometric R filter on an exoplanet transit. The target was Qatar-10 b, a large hot Jupiter in a 1.6-day orbit around an F-type star over 1800 light years away in the constellation of Draco. TESS observations are in the R band so this is good practice for TFOP. 🔭🧪☄️

A lightcurve graph of the star Qatar-10 showing the characteristic dip as its hot Jupiter exoplanet passes in front of it and gradually dims its light. The y-axis is relative flux. The x-axis is time, measured in the barycentric julian date (BJD). The graph is drawn in red, and a best-fit curve is drawn between the points, tracing a flat-bottomed U-shaped dip. There are two red vertical dashed lines that roughly mark the start and end of the U-shaped dip. The first is labeled "predicted ingress" and the second is labeled "predicted egress". Below that, there is another plot of black points with error bars, with a dashed horizontal line running through them. This is the plot of residuals.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Imaged M87, an elliptical galaxy with several trillion stars. It's an active galaxy, and its supermassive black hole is producing a relativistic jet many thousands of light years long. It's a thin blue streak going off to the right. You can see it clearly in the cropped, contrast-enhanced image. 🔭🧪

A photo of a starfield. In between the stars are several golden-white fuzzy patches of light. In the center of the image is a much larger golden-white fuzzball. Each fuzzball is in fact an entire galaxy.

A cropped, contrast-adjusted image showing a thing blue-ish line coming off the core of a golden-white fuzzy object and moving towards the upper right corner of the image. It is a bright jet of material being ejected from the nucleus of the giant elliptical galaxy M 87 moving at relativistic speeds.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Welcome home, crew of Integrity. Thank you for inspiring so many of us.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

SPLASHDOWN!! THEY'RE HOME SAFE!!

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

6-minute plasma blackout. This is the most nerve-wracking part.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

1 minute until re-entry interface.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Less than 9 minutes before Integrity hits the top of the atmosphere. They're almost home! I'm still very nervous though. I can't imagine how they must feel onboard! Everything is looking nominal.

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S.M. Pritchard @smpritchard.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

@jebox.bsky.social Hi Jens! I'm not sure where or who to share this with, but I've compiled some feedback for the Chaos Cubed drop. It's a combination of some of my own ideas and some more general things I've seen from around the community. Hopefully you can share it around with the team? Thanks!

An infographic-style image that says:

Chaos Cubed Feedback

Sulfur Cubes
-Small sulfur cubes should be able to be eaten by frogs. Frogs could then drop either sulfur block (making it renewable), potent sulfur blocks, or maybe even a new sulfur item used in crafting recipes.

Biome Generation
-Surface sulfur springs should generate with rings of cinnabar and calcite. Coarse dirt should also surround the springs, as the noxious fumes and sulfur would kill off the nearby plantlife.

-Calcite should be added into the block gradient of sulfur caves, and maybe also a new orange block to help ease the transition.

-Pools within sulfur caves should be more frequent and spawn with more potent sulfur.

-Sulfur springs should generate within sulfur caves to give them more visual appeal.

-A decorative block similar to pointed dripstone, like a sulfur "vent", would round out the biome. They'd be able to stack like pointed dripstone. When placed on potent sulfur or magma, the vents could also emit noxious gas.

-Instead of glow lichen, the idea of hanging glow worms could be re-introduced for sulfur caves specifically.

Sounds
-Sulfur sounds strangely wet and mushy for a dry, crystalline mineral. It should instead be more crunchy and stone-like, similar to tuff or calcite.

General
-Sulfur should be used in a new grafting recipe for gunpowder. Either the block itself, potent sulfur, or a new sulfur item (perhaps dropped by a frog that has eaten a small sulfur cube).

-Noxious gas should also inflict poison in addition to nausea.

-When lit on fire, sulfur should burn with a deep-blue fire. Sulfur would also be used in crafting new sulfur torches, sulfur campfires, and sulfur lanterns.

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